Cruel detail at heart of Aussie scams
Written by admin on September 17, 2024
Aussies scammed out of millions of dollars have called for an overhaul on how major banks handle compensation and reimbursement, warning more are at risk of losing money if Labor’s scam prevention laws aren’t fast-tracked.
ACT independent Senator David Pocock joined 14 scam victims outside the Senate as he called on the Federal Government to strengthen their proposed scam prevention laws.
The draft legislation is an economy‑wide reform to protect the Australian community from scams – covering banks, telcos and digital platforms and promising harsh penalties for failing to stop scammers getting through to their customers.
One Canberra woman, Harriet, spoke of her heartbreak after learning the $1.6 million proceeds of her elderly mother’s home were stolen after she was duped into depositing the money into what appeared to be an ING term deposit account.
Harriet told her transferring bank that this ING account – who were actually cyber criminals – had told her they used Westpac for “holding” accounts.
She explained her mother’s bank went ahead and transferred the money to the scam account in Westpac, despite her mother’s bank later admitting they knew ING did not bank with other banks.
Harriet said the bank had denied liability and offered no compensation, despite her mother banking with them for half a century.
David Sweeney, from Melbourne, said it took over five years to get his father’s money back after he was defrauded of just over $1 million from an elaborate financial investment scam.
“For five years the banks only wanted to talk about the fact that my father authorised the payments,” he said.
“The implication being that my father was responsible. The banks had done all they could, they said.”
]Another woman, Cindy Reddy, said her parents lost $1.1 million to a scam pretending to be a short-term deposit investment on behalf of an international investment firm.
It represented the entirety of her parents’ retirement fund and personal life savings – and no funds have been recovered.
Senator Pocock the Federal Government had proposed to “prevent and punish” scammers with fines, but not to protect.
He said a model similar to the UK, where the banks were “on the hook”, would result in banks spending more time and energy in ensuring scams never happened in the first place.
“The big four (banks) made almost $32 billion profit last year alone,” Senator Pocock said.
More Coverage
“They do whatever they can to ensure they don’t have to spend money on these sorts of things.
“They should – they have a role to play, not just in preventing scams … in actually reimbursing people.”
Labor’s draft legislation is open for submissions until October 4.
